Five Moral Arguments Against the DREAM Act

Townhall.com ^ | July 1, 2011 | Ira Mehlman

[Kaslin]

It’s back. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is once again pushing the DREAM Act amnesty. Before a packed room (mostly of illegal aliens), the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing earlier this week stacked with witnesses who favor granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens.

Leaving aside all of the deceitful provisions that have been built into the bill that makes it a much broader amnesty than proponents let on, it is important to address the fundamental premise that passing the bill is a moral imperative because the people who would benefit are blameless for being here illegally.

The DREAM Act fulfills the parents’ principle reason for breaking the law in the first place. Ask the typical illegal alien why he or she came to United States illegally, and invariably the answer is, “I wanted to do better for my family.” This is a perfectly rational and understandable response, but not a justification for violating the law. In essence, what the DREAM Act does is provide the parents precisely what they sought when they brought their kids illegally to the United States: a green card and all of the benefits that America has to offer. Even if the bill were to include a provision that DREAM Act beneficiaries could never sponsor the parents who brought them to the country illegally, it would still fulfill the parents’ primary objective for bringing them here.

The DREAM Act would touch-off an even greater wave of illegal immigration. Because the DREAM Act is being marketed as a moral imperative – as opposed to a more general amnesty, which is sold as bowing to reality – it comes with an absolute assurance that it will be repeated. If we have a moral imperative to provide amnesty to the current population of people who were brought here as kids, won’t we have the same moral imperative for the next generation of people who arrive under similar circumstances? The unmistakable message to people all around the world is: Get over here and bring your kids. America will feel morally obligated to give them green cards too.

The DREAM Act absolves illegal aliens of their fundamental responsibilities as parents. There is a fundamental principle that parents are responsible for the consequences that their actions and choices have on their kids. Unfortunately, children inevitably pay a price when parents make bad decisions or break laws. The DREAM Act carves out a single exception to this universal tenet of the social contract. The message it sends is that if you violate U.S. immigration law, American society is responsible for fixing the mess you created for your kids.

The absence of a reward or benefit is not the same as a punishment. DREAM Act proponents repeatedly argue that by not granting legal status to targeted beneficiaries we are, essentially, punishing children for the sins of their parents. This is an absolutely specious claim. By no stretch of the imagination are the children of illegal aliens being punished. Not rewarding them with legal residence and expensive college tuition subsidies is simply withholding benefits to which they never had any entitlement in the first place.

Adults have the obligation to do the right thing, even if their parents have done the wrong thing. Society glorifies people who do what is right, especially when doing what is right comes at some significant cost. Yes, many would-be DREAM Act beneficiaries have been dealt a bad hand (by their parents). As difficult (even unfair) as it may be, upon reaching adulthood they have the responsibility to obey the law. When, for example, Jose Antonio Vargas proclaims on the pages of The New York Times Magazine, that he knowingly engaged in illegal activities in order to remain and work in the United States illegally, he became culpable in his own right. While he, and others like him, may be more sympathetic than the people who committed the predicate offense, their situation does not excuse their own illegal acts.

[ken21]

there are many american tax payers cheated by this law.

move out of state to go to a university and you will find yourself paying out-of-state tuition

while the mexicans are paying in-state.

[Jim from C-Town]

#1- their parents and they themselves have been STEELING from the tax payers their entire lives.

[boomop1]

All in room should have been arrested including Durbin. this is not our country anymore.

[Twinkie]

This is about getting BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA, and other DEMOCRATS, elected endlessly. No more. No less. - They have had a lock on the black vote almost totally, and deceitfully, for many years now. THEY WANT IT ALL, FOREVER, and Obama’s iron fist is designed to mandate the DREAM ACT.

[SMARTY]

It is just the institutionalized theft of American resources/revenues. Theft is Theft.

PERIOD

How can people who break the law become a favored class in a country where its law-abiding citizens are coerced to subsidize the lawbreaker?

[HiJinx]

Ping!

[Ohioan]

There are yet more compelling arguments against this travesty.

For one thing, it reflects the Marxist promotion of "Diversity," as a method for breaking down any American sense of a unique identity--part of the lifeblood for the continuity of any people.

For another, it fails to take into account that we are already far beyond the ideal population for the lifestyle that was always associated with American dynamism. The question is who should share the dwindling resources. (Your points, admittedly, do relate to this.)

The "Diversity" gambit, we are suggesting in the current July feature at the Truth Based Logic Domain, is a humanist pursuit, which reawakes the hubris of Nimrod at ancient Babel, where the idea of an undifferentiated humanity took a fall, long ago. (Is Pursuit Of "Diversity" A Return To Babel?)

The subject also reminds one of the fall of Rome, and what followed.

William Flax

[Ohioan]

How can people who break the law become a favored class in a country where its law-abiding citizens are coerced to subsidize the lawbreaker?

Our immigration policy, ever since Teddy Kennedy helped put through the abomination in 1965, has never been about the interests of rooted Americans. The idea, rather, has been to change the very character of America, to make America more like the Third World--to end American exceptionalism, to put it into the context of the present occupant of the White House.

A nation is not a game of musical chairs. Who occupy the chairs, defines the character & culture of the nation. Jefferson was not a fool, when he bought Louisiana, precisely for the purpose of achieving a buffer for settlement, between the Hispanic & Anglo sections of the Continent. But today, the Marxist influence ("political correctness.") prevents our even having a meaningful discussion of the concepts involved.

For more on the subject: Immigration & The American Future.

William Flax

[Kaslin]

Of course it is

[Kaslin]

How about especially Durbin? He’s the moron who believes illegals should become president

[Liz]

US immigration policy has never been about the interests of rooted Americans. Rather, it has been to change the very character of America.......to make America more like the Third World.......to end American exceptionalism (in the context of the present WH occupant).

N-i-c-e take, Ohioan.

2009---TEXAS DREAM ACT DEMONSTRATION---not just education.

Conspiring to destroy the USA from within.

The lawbreaker Dreamers actually say they are "inspired" by the Civil Rights movement. They've confronted legislators, launched hunger strikes, and even publicly announced their illegal status to draw attention to their demands for freebies.

ANALYSIS Notice the irony here----these criminals consider the United States an invader state---a foreign power imposed on Third World hellholes. They arrogantly refuse to refer to the US by its legal name. The US is known by latinos as el Norte, (“the North”), el Otro Lado (“the Other Side”), or Gringolandia (the “Anglo Entity”). Yet the freeloaders have little or no compunction in using American history to sate their greed.

By their very presence, illegals evince an utter contempt for America, Americans and our sacrosanct rule of law which uniquely defines the American way of life.

===========================

Riding the US gravy train for endless freebies is addictive----these users will do or say anything to keep sucking up benefits. We do not need, nor do we want on US soil, those who are all too willing to destroy Western civilization, and our democracy, for their own self-serving ends.

Those duped by the "here for a better life" scam need to read this. They only look like they're mowing loans, pumping gas, or flipping hamburgers.......the main occupation of these hyphenated-separatists is creating chaos to divert attention from the Third World they are building on US soil.

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Why is it illegal lawbreakers have all these countries .... a succession of US presidents and the US govt..... defending their "rights?" And "real citizens" do not have anyone.....even our own govt......protecting Americans' rights?

REFERENCE News reports say Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Peru are conspiring to collude with The Anti-Defamation League, The American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and several other civil and immigrant rights groups to infringe on US sovereignty to make laws as we see fit. The co-conspirators filed a federal class-action lawsuit against Georgia's law and are now asking a judge to halt the measure pending the outcome of their case (which Ga courts agreed to)...and vote-crazed Obama is in on the collusion.

Illegals are a national security threat. They are conspiring to tear down democracy---and the hellholes they escaped from are helping them. .....colluding to form voting blocs that will pressure vote-crazed legislators to start the foreign aid gravy train to homelands to which illegals pledge their loyalty.......aided and abetted by the Ovomitons.

[4Liberty]

#6. THEFT IS WRONG. Whether practiced domestically (by US citizens), or foreign folks.

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Funding for private investment (e.g., your education, or for a small business loan) is not a “Right.”

[raybbr]

This was predicted over twenty years ago...

The Path to National Suicide by Lawrence Auster (1990)

An essay on multi-culturalism and immigration.

Click the Pic!!!!

Excerpt....

How can we account for this remarkable silence? The answer, as I will try to show, is that when the Immigration Reform Act of 1965 was being considered in Congress, the demographic impact of the bill was misunderstood and downplayed by its sponsors. As a result, the subject of population change was never seriously examined. The lawmakers’ stated intention was that the Act should not radically transform America’s ethnic character; indeed, it was taken for granted by liberals such as Robert Kennedy that it was in the nation’s interest to avoid such a change. But the dramatic ethnic transformation that has actually occurred as a result of the 1965 Act has insensibly led to acceptance of that transformation in the form of a new, multicultural vision of American society. Dominating the media and the schools, ritualistically echoed by every politician, enforced in every public institution, this orthodoxy now forbids public criticism of the new path the country has taken. “We are a nation of immigrants,” we tell ourselves— and the subject is closed. The consequences of this code of silence are bizarre. One can listen to statesmen and philosophers agonize over the multitudinous causes of our decline, and not hear a single word about the massive immigration from the Third World and the resulting social divisions. Opponents of population growth, whose crusade began in the 1960s out of a concern about the growth rate among resident Americans and its effects on the environment and the quality of life, now studiously ignore the question of immigration, which accounts for fully half of our population growth.

This curious inhibition stems, of course, from a paralyzing fear of the charge of “racism.” The very manner in which the issue is framed—as a matter of equal rights and the blessings of diversity on one side, versus “racism” on the other—tends to cut off all rational discourse on the subject. One can only wonder what would happen if the proponents of open immigration allowed the issue to be discussed, not as a moralistic dichotomy, but in terms of its real consequences. Instead of saying: “We believe in the equal and unlimited right of all people to immigrate to the U.S. and enrich our land with their diversity,” what if they said: “We believe in an immigration policy which must result in a staggering increase in our population, a revolution in our culture and way of life, and the gradual submergence of our current population by Hispanic and Caribbean and Asian peoples.” Such frankness would open up an honest debate between those who favor a radical change in America’s ethnic and cultural identity and those who think this nation should preserve its way of life and its predominant, European-American character. That is the actual choice—as distinct from the theoretical choice between “equality” and “racism”—that our nation faces. But the tyranny of silence has prevented the American people from freely making that choice.

[Ohioan]

Well stated, and to the point.

Part of the egregious folly that underlies all Socialist movements is that which suggests that socio/environment--culture--can remake people. The essential response is that people make their culture, not the culture people. We are all different, and a nation is not a game of musical chairs.

What is happening right now, makes the point very clear. America has not remade the incongruous entrants, they are remaking large areas of America, and thus imperiling all we hold dear.

How much wiser to treat all with respect, but to preserve for every nation, their own ongoing character in the lands of their forebears. This raises many questions with regard to foreign policy over the past two generations--as we have consistently followed the social environmentalists at the expense of the continuity of American society.

For parallels to the similar self-destruction of Rome with this humanist arrogance of the contemporary Left, (Return To Babel). For the absurdity of the "Diversity" cult, (Putting Diversity Into Context).

William Flax